At the door of a kind of restaurant I was deposited, and no sooner had the carriage stopped than an ancient woman opened the door and welcomed me in fluent Italian. As my knowledge of that language is limited, she called loudly for “Marie,” a shrewd and kindly woman of about thirty, who appeared from a sort of cellar from behind the eating-room, and in French informed me that she had a room, told me the very reasonable terms, and asked for a deposit; and very soon I found myself installed in an uncarpeted apartment furnished with an iron stove, a bed, a washhand-stand, and a small table. This was the best room. A powerful and eloquent odour pervaded the house, telling of the thoroughly Italian nature of the cooking, and hinting at the existence of innumerable cesspools on the premises. I found afterwards that there were five latrines in the house. It needed but a dinner in the eating-room to complete the tale of excellence of this exceptional pension, where one met Armenians and Levantines performing the usual skilful feats with knives and awkward morsels, regarding the fork as an instrument fit only for the inexperienced and timorous. Next morning I climbed by devious alleys, and through lakes and torrents of filth to Pera, and spent hours trying to find better accommodation at a moderate price; but after being shown the loathsome dens of various Armenians and Greeks, and retiring with the best grace possible before the astonishing charges of every clean and relatively wholesome place, I was fortunate enough to meet a Russian, a tenant of an “appartement”--the Constantinopolitan flat--who wished to find an occupier during a three months’ visit to Moscow. [Sidenote: MY LIFE IN PERA] To my great delight the “appartement”--in a new building close to the Pera Palace Hotel, in one of the best parts of Constantinople--was clean and well-furnished, and we closed, with as much satisfaction on his side, I hope, as on mine. At any rate, he insisted upon sealing the arrangement with innumerable “aperitifs,” followed by vodkas and liqueurs at various _brasseries_ about Pera, and having become friendly with a resplendent lady of Roumania, he bade me farewell and departed with his new acquaintance.